


by the time

by harajukucrepes



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-02 23:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6587815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harajukucrepes/pseuds/harajukucrepes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Keiji said, when you buy an apartment later, get one with a volleyball court. It left Bokuto-san with a reason to hoot happily for the next three weeks—and that was the story of how Keiji managed to move in with Bokuto-san by the time he passed the bar exam and got his first pre-legal job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	by the time

**Author's Note:**

> This was fun to write :D

*

 

by the time

 

*

 

By the time Bokuto-san graduated from high school, Keiji had had a pretty solid idea to how he was going to spend the next year up to his own graduation. First of all, he would need to groom an ace to take over Bokuto-san and another to eventually take over himself as the setter. Second of all, he would need to plan his cram school lessons around the tournament schedule. Finally, he would need to go through the list of current second and first years and announce his recruitment plans for the fresh academic year.

He would carry on the Volleyball Club’s legacy and he would pass the college entrance exams with flying colours, everything would be fine.

Except for Bokuto-san, who had apparently just realised that he was one year older than Keiji and therefore would be separated from Keiji once he graduated. He quickly insisted to have himself inserted into Keiji’s training plans with the _kouhai_ s for the new year because since he was going to train a “new ace” he would need the “old ace” back once in a while, wouldn’t he? Since he would need help anyway with his recruitment plans (“Actually, I wouldn’t”, Keiji said) so having the ace alumni would be _supppperrr_ convenient to showcase the club’s achievement, wouldn’t it? Plus, plus, Akaashi would be lonely without Bokuto-san (“Actually, I _really_ wouldn’t”, Keiji said), wouldn’t he?

It took Keiji a few months of planning, re-planning (because Bokuto-san complained that his appearance in the volleyball practices was too infrequent) then re-re-planning and by the time Keiji had done dealing with Bokuto-san’s whims and complaints, it was already almost the time to suggest a new captain to the Coach.

 

*

 

By the time Keiji graduated from university, Bokuto-san had managed to won Japan the Youth Championship, clinched the title national MVP for three years in a row, had a cheerleading club established just for him, helped Kuroo in successfully organising Tsukishima’s birthday party that ended with them making out secretly after that ( _finally_ , Keiji was thinking, but it caused Bokuto-san so much of a meltdown that it had Keiji sighing in exasperation; “don’t tell me you _didn’t expect_ this?” Keiji had to hiss into Bokuto-san’s ear to stop him from storming straight into them), bought his own apartment (thanks to that advertisements he did for one of those Pocari’s new variety of vitamin water), travelled (on a sponsored budget) to at least ten different countries, trained a few more generations of volleyball aces at Fukurodani, but still, magnificently, didn’t manage to catch on to the fact that graduating university was very, very important to Keiji.

In fact, the fact that Keiji couldn’t be a professional volleyball player and a lawyer at the same time distressed him so much that he sought out the Fukurodani’s career counselling to discuss options— _Keiji’s._

Could Akaashi still play volleyball if he didn’t take up professional volleyball? Could Akaashi still be my setter even if he didn’t take up professional volleyball? Could I maybe not take professional volleyball—wait, sorry that’s not it.

Could Akaashi still play with me, if our paths now take a different turn from each other?

So Keiji said, when you buy an apartment later, get one with a volleyball court. It left Bokuto-san with a reason to hoot happily for the next three weeks—and that was the story of how Keiji managed to move in with Bokuto-san by the time he passed the bar exam and got his first pre-legal job.

 

*

 

By the time Keiji turned thirty, Bokuto-san had managed to make enough money to be able to retire comfortably. It was good that Bokuto-san never seemed to be able to get the grasp to how wealthy he was, so he, miraculously, managed to save a small fortune for himself. He also never seemed to be able to get the idea of an investment no matter how Kuroo (with Tsukishima’s help) explained it. At one point he almost wanted to give up and asked Keiji if he could just hand in the money to Kuroo since investing was so profitable and all but Keiji wasn’t fond of real estate. It wasn’t like he didn’t trust Tsukishima (he was, after all, a financial analyst for one of the nation’s biggest banks), but he just didn’t like the game of economics. Perhaps working in law had made him doubt everything.

Perhaps the more miraculous thing was the fact that his parents had also given up trying to arrange a suitable bride for him, even with all the possible types of women imaginable—the intelligent, the bubbly, the sweet and domestic, the polite and dependable, the pretty and dainty, the dark beauties, the bright sunshines—because all it took was Keiji to bring Bokuto-san back home every single year for the New Year dinners to tell them that their marriage plans for Keiji would fall through, and would keep falling through. Bokuto-san was a nice, upstanding young man who had been taking care of Keiji for a long time and his family simply loved him—he might be dumb, slow, and simple to a fault, but Keiji knew that being charmed people who were dumb, slow and simple was scientifically proven to be a hereditary trait.

The vision that Keiji had as a teenager for his own 30-year-old self didn’t exactly match his current predicament, with Bokuto-san being the rock, that steady presence in his life that (and by this time, Keiji could say with absolute confidence despite its absolute corniness) laid the foundation of the rest of his lifetime ahead.

 

*

 

By the time Keiji celebrated his fortieth birthday, Bokuto-san had retired from competitive volleyball and had now chosen to be the youth team’s coach. He was the top candidate for the national coach position, but he figured that his ties with Fukurodani was worth more than an illustrious after-career. Sometimes Bokuto-san could be rather thoughtful, and after all this time, Keiji still didn’t know what to make of it whenever Bokuto-san did something so unexpectedly romantic (in a lot of sense).

Like that time he sent Keiji a bouquet of flowers (“Flowers?? At this age??” Kuroo snickered, though he really shouldn’t be saying anything, seeing how he just returned from Hawaii with Tsukishima). Or that time he offered to change the property deed of the apartment they were living in to include Keiji’s name as well (“It’s only natural, since you’ve been basically the one taking care of it,” said Bokuto-san). Or that time he just dropped random letters with pictures he took from Guam where he and the Fukurodani team had a training camp in (“Bokuto-san, you could have just sent via email,” Keiji said, wondering if Bokuto-san had forgotten how to connect to wi-fi in another country).

Or that time when he held him with uncharacteristic neediness and whispered to Keiji that he was really happy. Really happy. Really very happy.

Akaashi, are you happy too? he asked but fell asleep without even getting the answer.

Keiji guessed he was happy too, even though he thought that by this time, he wouldn’t have needed to say anything. Bokuto-san wasn’t the kind that needed words anyway, just like that time many many years ago when they had first met in the volleyball court, Keiji as a freshman vying for the setter position, Bokuto-san the super prodigy shaped to be the next ace. That time Keiji saw him being so pleased with himself after he managed to spike straights successfully and felt that he could go on living his life making sure that Bokuto-san would only be making his trademark happy owl faces. That time Keiji saw him winning the national MVP title for the first time and felt as though he won it as well. That face Bokuto-san made when Keiji told him that he would be moving in with him, but he would have to leave the refridgerator management with him. That face Bokuto-san made when Keiji asked him to stop comparing their tiny snuggles to the stories of stolen kisses that Kuroo kept feeding him with.

Yet despite that Keiji knew more than anything that Kuroo reserved some bragging rights, because Tsukishima would rather die than admit that he was crazily infatuated with Kuroo. Instead, he did those little things that hinted to it, like clutching at Kuroo’s sleeves whenever they go out for drinks. Like stealthily removing that parsley stalk from his favourite dish because Kuroo couldn’t stand the taste. Like making sure to download all the Nekoma matches in case Kuroo didn’t save the streaming links. Like keeping Kenma company during social functions just to make sure that Kenma didn’t sneak into the toilet to read any of those product reviews of his own games and proceed to obsessively redesign them. Like telling him which jersey he had worn for two days straight and please put it in the laundry bag. Like maybe sometimes arranging his shoes in the _genkan_  whenever the alarm went off and Kuroo didn’t manage to wake up on time so that it would be easier for him to just slip into the shoes and run off to his car.

Keiji knew all these because by this time, he had realised that Tsukishima and him were no different from each other.

Maybe it was fate, the universe’s way to balance out the stupid that was Bokuto-san and Kuroo with the likes of them. Maybe it was predetermined, maybe there really was someone with higher powers—and by this time Keiji couldn’t really care enough.

By this time, he had stayed with him for so long that Bokuto-san finally caught on, so perhaps having the rest of his life to have his feelings reciprocated wasn’t too bad an idea.

 

*


End file.
